Cutting Arts in Schools

I was recently talking with a friend about the schools cutting back on the arts and the strange idea that art should only be done one way... all the beans inside the lines.  For a while, I was an "artist on call" at the local Unified School district.  They called me to come in and do art with the primary grades mostly.  I had to point out to the teachers that the kids who were most creative were usually the ones that did "outside the lines" types of things.  And these were usually the same kids who weren't fitting in well with the academic studies.  I remember telling several teachers that those children would respond better if they (the teachers) could just find a creative/artistic way to explain the same information.  But in today’s schools, that are so over-crowded, it can hardly be expected for teachers to spend extra time trying to reach the right-brained kids.  Sad but true.  The administrators somehow believe that if 10 to 20 percent of the children are not being reached, that is an acceptable loss.  I say with smaller class sizes and more teachers, all the children could be reached; even the right-brained artistic types.  Then no one will be left behind. 

Those children, who simply must get up and walk around, would be allowed the freedom to do more kinesthetic tasks while still learning math and science.  Those children who must HEAR as well as see could be reading aloud or doing oral spelling tests and excel instead of fail.  Those children who prefer quietly reading to absorb material could find a quiet corner to do just that.  This sounds like chaos but I made it work in my home while homeschooling my children.  It can only happen with smaller classes and openness to the way the child learns best and not the cheapest way curriculum publishers can present material. 

What a utopia that would be?  Crowding more children into already over-crowded classrooms to save a buck is just not working and the United States is falling far behind the world in education for this reason.  Cutting arts out of schools to shave off a few pennies is like taking the color out of movies.  Sure the content is still there but there isn’t much interest in it anymore.

Children need art, music, creative writing, and dance to add life and emotion, joy and expression back into the basics of three Rs.